American English, British English or “Universal” English

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Translate to English, yes, but which one?

A lot has been written about the differences between American English and British English. Without getting into that debate all over again, it remains a consideration when translating into English.

English, yes, but which one? Mark Twain's or William Shakespeare's?

Ten years ago, the answer would have been an obvious one. If you wanted a product to be marketed in the States, you would have requested American English and if your target audience was the Queen's faithful subjects, no doubt British English would have to be used.

These days, however, clients seldom specify a “regional” variant. Indeed, with the advent of the Internet, geographical considerations are no longer the order of the day, and your translations are now intended for all English speakers, native or otherwise, be they American, British, Australian, Indian, Chinese or even Russian.

Hence the need to translate into “Universal English”, “International English”, “Standard English”, or any other adjective you care to slap on the word English to highlight its unique international character. This approach is of course highly reasonable from a client's point of view.

Unfortunately, for translators, there is no such as thing as “Universal English”. You can either write “color” or “colour”, so it comes down to the translation agency to do for the best and make a decision. It is true that the differences between American English, Australian English and British English will in most cases not warrant different translations, so a choice has to be done.

To help with that choice, I decided to do a little research to determine empirically which English lingo was predominant on the net.

To this end, several equivalent words in both US English and UK English were selected to establish the number of occurrences for each in Google search results.

US vs. UK English: Global Internet search results

US English terms

Number of occurrences

UK English terms

Number of occurrences

Color

884,000,000

Colour

169,000,000

Airplane

51,400,000

Aeroplane

4,790,000

Aluminum

83,300,000

Aluminium

58,900,000

Gear-shift

1,140,000

Gear-lever

384,000

Behoove

328,000

Behove

78,000

Recognize

79,800,000

Recognise

19,800,000

Behavior

147,000,000

Behaviour

58,700,000

Paralyze

1,300,000

Paralyse

631,000

Defense

173,000,000

Defence

57,200,000

Specialty

152,000,000

Speciality

14,500,000

Mailbox

32,600,000

Postbox

1,280,000

US English

1,605,868,000

UK English

385,263,000

More terms could be used to bring further validation, but as results were consistent for all terms, it was deemed unnecessary. This approach is of course not perfect but should nevertheless bring some answers as to usages on the Internet. Emphasis was made on spelling differences rather than term usage differences to avoid ambiguity, as much as possible anyway: for instance, while the British say “pavement” as the equivalent of the US “sidewalk”, the word “pavement” is also used in US English with different meanings, which makes the comparison irrelevant.

As you can see above, US spelling and terms are consistently prevalent over their British counterparts on the Internet, with 80% of all web pages in US English against 20% in UK English.

The same words were also searched on *.uk websites only, to validate the differences observed previously.

US vs. UK English: UK websites only

US English terms

Number of occurrences

UK English terms

Number of occurrences

Color

5,280,000

Colour

14,400,000

Airplane

411,000

Aeroplane

343,000

Aluminum

711,000

Aluminium

3,570,000

Gear-shift

42,400

Gear-lever

67,500

Behoove

2,410

Behove

2,490

Recognize

676,000

Recognise

3,220,000

Behavior

1,270,000

Behaviour

5,150,000

Paralyze

9,730

Paralyse

26,200

Defense

986,000

Defence

4,640,000

Specialty

1,230,000

Speciality

1,660,000

Mailbox

662,000

Postbox

57,700

US English

11,280,540

UK English

33,136,890

These numbers show that indeed UK English is predominant in UK websites, which isn't much of a surprise in itself.

Yet, US English spelling is used in over 25% of all UK Web pages!!! Mailbox, a previously US-only term is now much more common on the British net than the traditional UK “postbox”.

Sure, there may be some spelling mistakes here and there, and it is easy to get mixed up between “fulfill” (US) and “fulfil” (UK), but 25% is well beyond reasonable allowance for typos and demonstrates that US English is very much present in Albion's cyberspace.

We now know that a US English translation will probably not be out of place in the UK, even though UK English remains, of course, the dominant variant.

In the interest of fairness, a similar test had to be done within US websites (*.us) to determine the degree to which the US market accepts British spelling and terms.

US vs. UK English: US websites only

US English terms

Number of occurrences

UK English terms

Number of occurrences

Color

8,770,000

Colour

671,000

Airplane

469,000

Aeroplane

12,700

Aluminum

2,060,000

Aluminium

1,390,000

Gear-shift

13,600

Gear-lever

1,300

Behoove

5,260

Behove

394

Recognize

1,590,000

Recognise

22,300

Behavior

1,550,000

Behaviour

138,000

Paralyze

7,010

Paralyse

580

Defense

2,090,000

Defence

99,600

Specialty

1,930,000

Speciality

39,700

Mailbox

293,000

Postbox

1,170

US English

18,777,870

UK English

2,376,744

This time, the conclusion is closer to expectations. If the British regularly use US spelling, the reverse is not quite true. UK spelling on US websites account for approximately 11% of the total, less than half of the 25% enjoyed by US English on UK websites. Still 11% is a pretty high number and would suggest the US market would not be too bothered by British spelling.

But what of other English speaking communities such as Australia? To answer that question, the same test was run on Australian websites (*.au) to see whether American English or UK English was prevalent.

US vs. UK English: Australian websites only

US English terms

Number of occurrences

UK English terms

Number of occurrences

Color

2,040,000

Colour

9,330,000

Airplane

149,000

Aeroplane

165,000

Aluminum

458,000

Aluminium

2,240,000

Gear-shift

29,900

Gear-lever

11,000

Behoove

678

Behove

5,550

Recognize

375,000

Recognise

2,340,000

Behavior

707,000

Behaviour

3,170,000

Paralyze

4,160

Paralyse

6,950

Defense

510,000

Defence

5,860,000

Specialty

1,440,000

Speciality

371,000

Mailbox

206,000

Postbox

5,600

US English

5,919,738

UK English

23,505,100

Given the figures above, it would appear Australia tends to favor UK English over US English, even more so than the UK, in fact. Indeed American English spelling accounts for 20% of all Australian Web pages against 25% for UK's.

That said, 20% is no small number and American spelling will most likely not shock the Australian audiences.

Conclusion

British English is dominant in the UK and in some of its old colonies (such as Australia and Canada), but overall, it makes no doubt that, if there is such a thing as an “Universal English”, that would be American English.

According to these figures, American English represents an astounding 80% of the English speaking Internet. When in doubt, you can't really go wrong with US English.

Translate in International English? Yes, sir! US English it is.

That said, British English is of course well understood throughout the English speaking world, and in some cases, using British English could help give a touch of “European chic” to some European products marketed in the US. Whereas most products benefit from the familiar “local” feel, some products thrive on a somewhat foreign, exotic perception.

This decision however belongs to marketing as this is a fine line to thread and the sophisticated “European touch” could also be tagged “poor spelling” by a less-than-discerning audience.